was wire shelving that he’d had attached to hold his notions and thread, scissors and fabric tape, and different trims. Discarded pieces of fabric and pattern paper always littered the floor. In the center of the room was a long table for patterning and cutting. Against one wall were two sewing machines. Carly had never understood the differences between the two or why two were needed. There were also two naked dress forms on rollers that moved around the studio as necessary. Usually, the forms wore garments in various stages of construction. Victor hung his finished pieces along the back wall.
Carly thought the red pieces would be hanging where she’d seen them last, but those wall bolts were empty. She’d walked around looking for them and gasped with alarm when she found them, carelessly piled in a heap in the corner of the studio.
She rescued them from the floor. “Why would he do this?” she’d said aloud when Hazel came to sniff the pile.
She’d draped the pieces across the back of that disgusting couch and decided she had the best chance of fitting into the jacket and skirt. She hung up the rest of the red collection, took the jacket and skirt, and summoned her hounds.
Those two red pieces were hanging on the door of her closet and staring at her now, disturbing the sanctity of her bedroom.
Her bedroom was her haven. It was small and quaint, and she’d covered her bed with a chenille bedspread her grandmother had used. She’d overstuffed the built-in bookcase with books, because Carly was a devoted bookworm . . . although she hadn’t had as much time to read or even stream Netflix in the last six months as she would have liked.
She had a vanity that she’d picked up at an estate sale. She’d spent the winter after she was laid off refinishing it and painting it a very soothing pale green. On the top of her vanity were the brushes and palettes of her cosmetics, lotions and creams, and her jewelry in a cloisonné box. The floors could get cold in the winter, so she’d put down a large, fluffy blue rug that felt delightful year-round beneath her feet.
The room’s windows were covered in sheer white drapery panels that gave her some privacy—not that she needed it this far back on the lot—but also allowed for natural light. Her walk-in closet with the crystal doorknobs was a great find for a house this old, because closets had been tiny midcentury. Hers was absolutely bursting with clothes and too many shoes and accessories, and—her dirty little secret—her handbag obsession.
“Ugh,” she said. “I need coffee.” She looked around for the dogs, and remembered that Hazel had gone home with Max. “Baxter?” She climbed out of bed and went into the kitchen. Baxter had returned to his corner, his head pressed against the seam. “Poor puppy,” she cooed to him, leaning over to stroke him. “I know you miss her. I miss her, too. Which I never thought I’d say, but there you go. I kind of miss him, too, you know. I mean, I hardly know the dude. But . . . I kind of miss him.”
She thought about Max as she made her coffee. She was grateful he hadn’t arrived while she was trying to peel the jacket off, cursing how tight the arms were. But once she’d managed to shove her enormous hams through the sleeves, she discovered that she could hardly pull the jacket around her ribs, much less her boobs. So she’d shrugged out of that and tossed it aside, and pulled on a hoodie and had decided it didn’t matter, that the skirt with the modern panniers was the interesting piece anyway.
But, as she and Max both knew, the skirt did not fit, and if there had been a fire, she would have surely perished, because she could hardly walk across the room in it. “Why is the fashion industry so hell-bent on a size zero?” she asked a sulking Baxter.
That she was nowhere near a size zero was the pickle she’d found herself in when Max had finally shown up. And of course he’d shown up looking all virile and manly in his formfitting Henley and his tortoiseshell rectangular frames that made his gray eyes stand out and made him look sexy and smart. He couldn’t be some regular guy who held no appeal for her whatsoever—he had to be hot. And Carly was just curvy enough that